Last night I was privileged to get to listen in on the special "What do we do now?' Town Hall phone call organized by Repower America, Al Gore's organization for promoting global climate change legislation in America.
If you go to the post-call discussion board, you will see that a number of people were disappointed in what happened during the call. And I have to count myself in that group for the following reason: The call was billed as "a Virtual Town Hall to discuss the way forward for the climate movement." But the "way forward" presented was essentially just "more of the same... only working harder".
I will give the former Vice President credit for honestly saying "The US government - not just the Senate but the US government - has failed us." But when it came to the question what do we do next, no one - including Al Gore - seemed capable of saying "Our strategy failed us too." Instead, Al Gore said "Leaders must act. We have to solve the crisis. We must stand up and reaffirm to our elected officials that they must lead. We must shift the balance of power. We need your ideas and input. We must redouble our efforts. We must take bold steps. We need inspiration still, because we cannot lose this fight."
And in answer to a question about "Climategate", he said talked about demanding that the media report the truth, writing letters and OpEds. He said that only when the media hears from enough of us will they change their habits and report the truth.
We've Lost. So, Let's Do What We've Done Again!
To me, this is all classic "fight the good fight and keep on fighting" language. And to be honest, I was expecting more from former Vice President Gore's organization for one main reason. Because - when he was Vice President - Al Gore was in charge of the Reinventing Government initiative in the Clinton Administration.
I was expecting more, because saying we will "do more of what hasn't worked" (which is essentially what was said last night) shows no evidence that any form of "reinventing thinking" exists in the top levels of Repower America. And without that type of strategic thinking, Repower America isn't going to get America to the climate friendly future it needs to reach.
As management guru Peter Drucker famously said, "We are getting better and better at doing the wrong things," which is exactly what Repower America is planning on doing. It thinks the solution to overcoming the failure America's climate movement just experienced is to do a better job of doing the things that didn't work the first time.
But I am not without hope. And that's because Repower America's leaders say this on their after-call discussion site...
We need to continue this crucial discussion. The Senate has abandoned comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation this year, and big oil, coal and fossil fuel lobbyists are ready to continue well-funded efforts to block action. How do you think we should move forward?Add your ideas below. We will feature insightful comments on our website in the days ahead.
Topics to consider:How should our grassroots-driven campaign continue the fight in the months and years ahead?
What audience or targets should we focus on? U.S. Congress, states and local city councils, major polluters, right wing media outlets, the fossil fuel lobby?
What do you think it will take to solve the climate crisis?
Now, even given this invitation to "add your ideas below", I know it won't be easy to perform an intervention in Repower America's strategic mindset. And that's because they have defined Repower America as a "grassroots-driven campaign", which is a very limiting definition.
But I am counting on the fact that this is essentially Al Gore's organization. And if enough people remind him of the true power of reinventing what you are doing (or as my mentor, systems thinking pioneer Russ Ackoff, preferred to say: "redesigning the system"), I believe he will drive the change in strategy necessary to enable Repower America to succeed.
A Brief History of the Reinventing Government Movement
Starting in the early 1990's, "Reinventing Government" was a huge movement. All across America, local governments were trying to "work smarter, not harder". The book "Reinventing Government" by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler catalyzed this movement, with the subtitle "How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector". I went to a presentation David Osborne gave to NYC government employees, since that's what I was back then. President Clinton created the federal government's version of this in March of 1993, by launching the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. You can read all about that here: A Brief History of Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government
Reinventing Repower America
For Repower America to succeed, it's leaders must realize that the forces allied against climate change legislation cannot be defeated head on. In such a battle, the lobbyists and the fear-based media echo chamber at their beck and call will always win. But who said this has to be a head to head contest? If the progressive movement learned anything from Barack Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton, it should have learned the power of asymmetrical, innovative political warfare!
This is the lesson Repower America needs to learn. And the first part of that overall lesson needs to be a redefinition of Repower America from a "grassroots-driven campaign" to a "cultural transformation campaign"... one that uses any and all legitimate people and tools available to it.
Going Beyond Grassroots Activities
And what do I mean by "legitimate people and tools"? Well, people and tools that go beyond what grassroots people can do. I love what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr did for America as much as anyone. But the grassroots model of "people power" will not work when it comes to climate change. We need a permanently transformed relationship between all of America and Mother Nature. What Martin Luther King Jr accomplished - as great as it was - did not eliminate the hatred of certain people for certain other people here in America. Laws were passed. And many people's hearts and minds were changed. But - as has been proven by the success of the Republican's "Southern Strategy" since the days of Richard Nixon - the culture in America was not completely transformed. There is a lot of truth in the statement "you cannot legislate morality". But you can transform a culture through new information.
A cultural transformation is possible. But the people and tools Repower America uses will need to include those that made "An Inconvenient Truth" such a success.
That's right. Al Gore's organization will have to reach out to Al Gore's friends in Hollywood. Because we need a massive, entertainment-led national education effort if we are ever going to teach all of America not just what is at stake but what is possible on the other side of solving the climate change challenge.
The Strategic Tool Set Of Thinking Differently: Using Hope, Not Fear!
And this gets me to a hugely important "tool set" Repower America must use: the transformational management principles of the real Reinventing movement (otherwise known as the social systemic sciences, as developed by W. Edwards Deming, Russell Ackoff, Peter Drucker, and R. Buckminster Fuller) And, once again, I know that Al Gore has some familiarity with at least a portion of this body of knowledge. And that's because he wrote the critically important book "The Assault on Reason" in 2007. In that book, Al details how the historically reason and logic based environment in which all of America's policy making decisions are made is under assault. This is a book rich in history lessons we should all learn. But it also points to the need to focus on changing that environment, rather than continuing to inject pro-climate change legislation efforts into an environment that is increasingly uninterested in the factual truth of the reality in which we live.
How to change this environment? That answer goes back to my point about engaging Hollywood. But unlike how Hollywood's talents have recently been used - to increase awareness of how bad things really are so as to scare people into taking action to prevent tragic potential future consequences of our inaction - Hollywood must be used to increase awareness, instead, of how wonderfully beautiful things really can potentially be once we get to the other side of preventing the catastrophe from happening.
The "prevent climate change" movement desperately needs to transform itself into an "achieve global prosperity for all" movement. We must shift from being a movement driven by fear to a movement driven by hope. Because using fear puts us on the same playing field as our enemies.
They are also using fear to fight us. And their fear-based tactics are much more powerful than ours, because theirs are based largely on claiming that short-term fearful consequences will happen. We are disadvantaged by talking about longer-term fearful consequences that are harder to sell when the other side is saying, for example, that Repower America is going to make things worse "tomorrow" by causing good jobs to be lost.
But if we transform into a hopeful future based movement, we will be tapping into that core American belief in doing whatever it takes for however long it takes in order to build a more hopeful future for ourselves and our children.
Achieving Hope Based Change Has Happened Before And Can Happen Again
The example I offer is the Walt Disney - Wernher von Braun partnership of 1955, which taught the American people that space travel was no longer a fantasy. This purely hope and adventure-based public communication effort (involving four TV specials broadcast on The Wonderful World of Disney) sowed the seeds for the public's support of the creation of NASA, the creation of which enabled humanity to achieve one of the greatest scientific and cultural achievements in human history!
Humanity now desperately needs to achieve another scientific and cultural breakthrough. And even as there is talk of other countries taking the lead away from America when it comes to things like solar and wind generated power, it is possible - through a Reinvented (or Redesigned) Repower America - for America to take the lead in promoting "a world beyond the risk of climate change... a world of global prosperity for all based on nature-friendly principles".
And where Walt Disney worked with Wernher von Braun, Repower America could work with Amory Lovins, William McDonough, and other scientists who have figured out how the fantasy of a post-climate change world of nature-friendly prosperity can become our future reality.
Such a transformational agenda - focused on hope rather than fear and powered by the communications skills of Hollywood - is my answer to the three questions posed by Repower America's leadership team.
A redesigned / reinvented Repower America can give back to all of America the power our nation once had to make the impossible possible.
Follow Steven G. Brant on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SteveBrant
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I suspect that you are onto something ultimately significant here, but I just don't have enough to go on, nor would I suspect one short article to be able to turn heads around, including my own.
" ...the transformational management principles of the real Reinventing movement (otherwise known as the social systemic sciences, as developed by W. Edwards Deming, Russell Ackoff, Peter Drucker, and R. Buckminster Fuller)..."
Would you please pick a defining book by each of these folks and/or books that synthesize their thoughts, and I'll hit the library. Out of my frustration with the narrow mindedness and fervent singlemindedness of almost everyone now-a-days, idiot or genius, rich or poor, conservative or liberal, I may take a crack at hope. (g)
BTW, your willingness to mix it up here in the comments is to be utterly commended. Thank You! I'm gonna mix it up myself with several commentors and I'm almost certain that it'll be more of the same old, same old, that you are trying to discourage, so I'll apologize in advance.
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z00L2uNAFw8&feature=youtube_gdata
It's always important to remember that Al Gore didn't invent the Internet; he invented Global Warming!!!
As Mahatma Gandhi told us, "first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
If a corporation has fifty billion bailout dollars to throw around, nothing and no one can prevent them from doing anything they please.
Especially now that the GOP has left the economy in ruins, people don't have the money to donate to good causes or the time to work for any candidate for free.
I don't know what can be done. I like the idea of publicizing a National Day of......., during which we boycott this or that industry. I think when those days work, it costs those companies money and really annoys them.
They're difficult to organize, of course, but hitting the big companies in the pocketbook seems to be the only thing that has the slightest effect.
Men who've spent their lives clawing their way to the top certainly are not going to risk all their money, power and social position by preserving anything that might be made profitable. They probably believe, with some justification, that when the oceans rise and cruel weather wipes out hundreds of millions, they and their families will be well-protected and well-fed in Switzerland.
So what if they have to fly on a new Concord to Antarctica to ski?
They really see no relationship at all between their privileged lives and the ecological catastrophe they cause. They just don't see it at all. And they never will.
I'd like to see huge demonstrations in every state capitol to show our elected officials that we want action, organized by a consortium of major climate change groups. And we need to make sure every candidate knows he/she will only win if they will vote for strong climate action, on both a local and national level.
I'd also like to see the government wage a campaign of clever posters and billboards around the country with simple graphics showing the crisis we're facing. Plaster them everywhere!
The President needs to make a prime time speech laying out the scientific facts behind global warming and the possible scenarios if we don't take action. He should also start a green jobs program for low income and out of work people.
I'm not too optimistic, since most people I talk to don't give a darn about climate change. Until it affects them personally, most people don't think about how the planet works.
This is why I advocate a strategy that is about people's lives.... not things that threaten people's lives.
If you say to people "Let's talk about how incredibly great the world can be", they will say "Okay" And then - during that conversation - you can say that in order to achieve this "Heaven on Earth" future, we need to deal with a number of negative things first, including war and peace issues because we cannot solve our climate change crisis in a world where people are still fighting with each other.
Everything is connected.
Yes,VP Gore is brilliant, but his understanding is flawed by completely ignoring the concurrent crisis that is right on our doorstep and much easier for the average person to understand. Politics and climate change are only a portion of the big picture. The cheap fossil fuel energy of our entire civilization is coming to an end. Within only 2 or 3 years time, world wide oil extraction will begin an inexorable 2-3% decline per year until by the end of the century there will be no more oil to pump. This will be followed over the next 2 decades by the peaks of natural gas, coal and uranium extraction, with the costs of each of these forms of energy going through the roof.
We have a built in limit on anthropogenic climate change whether we like it or not, and Al Gore ignores this. It could be Gore's best argument for the transition that we must make because the ameliorizing solutions for both crises are nearly exactly the same. For most folks not getting around without gas for their car is a lot stronger call to arms than a few degrees more temperature.
And don't get me started on a guy with multiple fossil fuel guzzling homes asking the rest of us to sacrifice and become involved in climate change amelioration. A former US VP shouldn't have to live like Ghandi, but neither should he live like a Goldman-Sachs CEO if he wants to influence change.
If Repower America is minimally serious about transorming itself into a force that might make a difference, it must join with those other organizations and individuals genuinely intent on a timely resolution of the crisis and form a seperate political party to get it done.
It is the only way that human induced climate change might be timely and sufficiently addressed and, even that is not assured, for we have wasted far too m uch precious time and iother resources on Barack Obama, the Dems and the Repubs. Neither this Presidentm, the Dems nor the Repubs have the intent or the political will to do what it takes, for they are too corrupt.
The solution may ultimately lie in finding non-political solutions. This will be the subject of a future essay.
Yet, these organizations and individuals still speak the same tired language and plan the same old strategies and tactics proven to be ineffective. Based on the historical data, one must assume that to rely on the timely conversion of the traditional political parties is certain folly for, the clock is ticking and as I mentioned earlier, both political parties are inherently corrupt.
Americans dedicated to resolving this climate crisis invested heavily in President Obama and the Democrats in 2008. Their response has been shameful, at best, and is more than fair proof that we must try something else. The meaningful action we must have in responding to this climate crisis will only occur when the American people have a legitimate political alternative.
Forgive me for preaching to the choir, but the old phrase "Time is of the essence." has never been more relevant. We simply do not have the time for more of the same, and the creation of a viable political party such as I describe cannot be accomplished without the organizations we speak of, and "movers and shakers" such as you, Mr. Brant. The time to act, to really act, is now.
I had one little idea to cut demand. PLAY BY DAY. Write your Govenor and say. I,m concerned about the pollution in our state. I believe if we could cut the amount of night games by 1/2 It would benifit our future generations.
Make the richest 2% Donate to a Green fund.
Refit our factories to make alternative energy sources. Teach Americans the skills they need to become part of the process. There should be jobs for people of all skills and education. NASA was able to get funding and reconstruct America because of Fear of of Russia.
Why shouldn't we be as concerned about the welfare of our children and the planet?
Call your congressman!
Your suggestions may be valid ones, but there is no way of implementing any of them without a strategy that leads to the transformation of the American culture. And only HOPE can be used to do that in this instance.
"They will say Sen Inhoff went somewhere to say we are in an ice age!"
I don't have the slightest truck with Sen. Inhoff, but be careful what you say or think. IMO, the biggest blunder of the climate change debate was to call it global warming. None of even the best climate scientists knows with any degree of certainty when or what a tipping point on climate will be or what it's longer term effects will be. We have learned from geologists with all the drilling into the Earth, its crusts and ice, in the 20th century, that the geological history of the last million years or so is pretty uniform 100,000 year cycles of 85-90,000 year glacial periods with 10-15,000 year interglacial periods. We are now about 10,000 years into the current interglacial period, so it is quite possible that human forced climate change will force the end of this interglacial period, several millenia ahead of its natural end. We know from the core evidence that previous descents into ice ages have been proceded by global warming from natural cycles and those descents have been in some cases very rapid by geological standards, literally in the space of less than one human life time.
The only thing that we can say with reasonable certainty about anthropogenic climate change is that it is likely to be cataclysmic for humans if not ameliorated, and it could be too late for amelioration.
Pretty funny actually!
Once it is widely acknowledged, survival can become an extremely powerful motivator.
The Arctic Global Warming Tipping Point has recently been found to be 400 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere.
We are currently at 390ppm and adding 2ppm each year.
Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy systems as fast as possible may soon be recognized as necessary to insure human survival.
See A 5 Point Program at http://www.aesopinstitute.org for a summary and supporting evidence.
If these facts are correct, we need to provide whatever incentives are necessary to produce and deploy renewable energy systems on a 24/7 basis, worldwide. And we need to do that very fast!
The earth has experienced two Tipping Points in the distant past. Both destroyed most life on the planet. In one case down to single-celled organisms.
A Tipping Point is unstoppable once it begins. Preventing it still appears possible. If we fail, we can kiss our lives and the lives of everyone else goodbye.
Check the facts. Ironically, what is needed may open a door to a strong economic recovery.
If we confront the challenge, the economy could revive in a manner analogous to the way WWII ended the great depression. The huge number of jobs generated by that war resulted in a 2% rate of unemployment.
Let's do as well meeting a life-threatening peacetime emergency!
You want a better message, get away from the things you say like "kiss our lives goodbye" because that is NOT going to happen. Go with eliminating pollution and foreign oil. Americans will buy into that.
The average temperature in Moscow in July was 14 degrees F above the norm. Only once in the 20th century did Moscow reach 99 degrees. In recent weeks, Moscow has reached 99 degrees 5 times. 40% of the Russian grain harvest lost...What if this heat wave was in Chicago or Beijing?
1. The IPCC wasn't "caught twisting data." *That* statement is propaganda. They made a reasonable adjustment based on science that has been twisted into "twisting data." Google "climate change data validated" if you don't believe me.
2. And "scare politicians into doing something"... what scare? What "something"?
3. A "trillion-dollar" tax would not recover the subsidies oil has already received. These subsidies include everything from the "depletion allowance" (a special write-off for oil producers) to roads unpaid for by the gas tax, to providing the military defense of overseas oilfields. The World Resources Institute estimated this subsidy at $300 billion annually in 1989, and it has only gone up.
Meanwhile, never mind climate change: It's completely non-controversial that U.S. domestic oil production peaked in 1971 (at < $2/bbl, 30% of consumption was imports). No matter how much we drill-baby-drill in Alaska or offshore, we will *never* return to that peak (Now oil $80/bbl, 70% of consumption is imports). We *must* have overseas oil from some of the least politically stable areas in the world. Even the API (the American Petroleum Institute - the oil lobby) admits as much.
So what's it going to be...buying the propaganda you're spouting, and endless resource wars, or maybe some renewables?
You are already getting screwed. The trick here is to get, even a little, unscrewed.
The problem with the "green" industry is that they want to have government tilt the scale in their favor and make them viable through subsidies on them and greater taxes on fossil fuels. There are people that would make alot of money off of such a switch and they are generally the ones that promote it while advocating against the monetary interests of other parties like oil companies. It comes off as ridiculously hypocritical. The answer isn't to force a change before the technology is ready. Imagine if that happened with automobiles before Ford invented the assembly line. That invention likely doesn't get made because the necessity for it would have been removed. When the technology is ready the country will make the shift. Short circuiting that wait could hurt the development of that technology.
B: Despite your belief that it's not, the technology is ready now. Amory Lovins notes that wind and conservation compete regularly with conventional energy sources (and win) *NOW*.
The private sector has already rejected nuclear. Without government subsidies for nuclear, no such plants would be built (not to mention the Price-Anderson act subsidy that re-insures all insurers of such plants).
This "economic argument" is like our beloved Governator claiming California can't fund home health care for the indigent elderly but can give multinationals a multi-billion-dollar tax break. Pure propaganda. For the record: home health care is 1/3 the expense of managed care (whose providers have well-funded lobbyists) and orders of magnitude cheaper than the inevitable emergency room visits.
So please, no death panels here, or for renewables.
C: If public policy had not helped out with funding, no nuclear anything, no semi-conductors, internet, space travel, interstates or flu vaccine.
You make it sound like Gore's is some kind of exceptional request. Nope.
Oh yes, and although it may be the popular wisdom, Ford didn't invent the assembly line, he perfected it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line
1970s... second ice age is coming and Ozone hole means end of all life
1990s... Global Warming... claims made on insufficient data
2000 + Global Warming morphes into Climate Change because man made Global Warming remains an unproven theory
2010 - BP Oil spill claimed by the Greenies to be the worst made made disaster in American history and just liket that.. NO OIL.. 40% OF IT GONE OVERNIGHT!
Article: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-07-home-star-energy-retrofit-bill-passes-house-broad-coalition-rule
Biden's Middle Class Task Force has come up with a plan to enable a retrofit process for businesses and homeowners in http://pacenow.org/documents/Recovery_Through_Retrofit_Final_Report.pdf that precisely spells out both the public and private roles that creates a market through which private sector jobs are created.
Further information on PACE bonds http://www.pacenow.org/.”
And in the lame duck session pass cap and rebate.
A call for global prosperity for all and an end to all wars - with the requirement being that climate change concerns be dealt with too - would be transformational!
is a worthwhile goal, and my personal one. Unfortunate is the fact
that the majority of our population lives in housing that can't feed
its own energy use even if the whole roof were solar panels and
the whole basement a battery farm. So you're stuck with Big Energy
and Big Transmission for the Big City.
In this vein however, "must take" laws that enable small producers
to feed the system and ensure their investment has a chance of
being viable (not crushed by robber barons) would at least dilute
the influence of Big Production and insert some competition.
Obama made me feel personally empowered when I was knocking on hundreds of doors in Missouri and Indiana. Since attending his inauguration, I've felt we had to give Obama to the system, and also feel less and less personally empowered.
I would embrace feeling personally empowered through a "Repower Yourself" campaign. :)